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Coelodonta
Coelodonta, also known as the Woolly rhinoceros, is an extinct species of rhinoceros that was common throughout Europe and northern Asia during the Pleistocene epoch and survived until the end of the last glacial period. The genus name Coelodonta means "cavity tooth". The woolly rhinoceros was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna. Information As the last and most derived member of the Pleistocene rhinoceros lineage, the woolly rhinoceros was well adapted to its environment. Stocky limbs and thick woolly pelage made it well suited to the steppe-tundra environment prevalent across the Palearctic ecozone during the Pleistocene glaciations. Like the vast majority of rhinoceroses, the body plan of the woolly rhinoceros adhered to a conservative morphology, like the first rhinoceroses seen in the late Eocene. A study of 40,000- to 70,000-year-old DNA samples showed its closest extant relative is the Sumatran rhinoceros. The appearance of woolly rhinos is known from mummified individuals from Siberia as well as cave paintings. An adult woolly rhinoceros was typically around 3 to 3.8 meters in length, with an estimated weight of around 1.8-2.7 tonnes. The woolly rhinoceros could grow to be 2 meters tall; the body size was thus comparable to, or slightly larger than, the extant white rhinoceros. Two horns on the skull were made of keratin, the anterior horn being 61 centimeters in length, with a smaller horn between its eyes. It had thick, long fur, small ears, short, thick legs, and a stocky body. Cave paintings suggest a wide dark band between the front and hind legs, but the feature is not universal, and the identification of pictured rhinoceroses as woolly rhinoceros is uncertain. Controversy has long surrounded the precise dietary preference of Coelodonta as past investigations have found both grazing and browsing modes of life to be plausible. The palaeodiet of the woolly rhinoceros has been reconstructed using several lines of evidence. Climatic reconstructions indicate the preferred environment to have been cold and arid steppe-tundra, with large herbivores forming an important part of the feedback cycle. Pollen analysis shows a prevalence of grasses and sedges within a more complicated vegetation mosaic. A strain vector biomechanical investigation of the skull, mandible and teeth of a well-preserved last cold stage individual recovered from Whitemoor Haye, Staffordshire, revealed musculature and dental characteristics that support a grazing feeding preference. In particular, the enlargement of the temporalis and neck muscles is consistent with that required to resist the large tugging forces generated when taking large mouthfuls of fodder from the ground. The presence of a large diastema supports this theory. Comparisons with extant perissodactyls confirm that Coelodonta was a hindgut fermentor with a single stomach, and as such would have grazed upon cellulose-rich, protein-poor fodder. This method of digestion would have required a large throughput of food and thus links the large mouthful size to the low nutritive content of the chosen grasses and sedges. Recent evidence suggests that woolly rhinos lived in the Arctic during the Last Glacial Maximum consumed approximately equal volumes of forbs, such as Artemisia, and graminoids. In-Game Coelodonta will be in the early access of Prehistoric Kingdom. Each skin are based on cave paintings. Gallery Woolly_rhino_skins.jpg Coelodonta_01_Preview.png|Stout Coelodonta_02_Preview.png|Grassland Coelodonta_03_Preview.png|Flint O_1dqtmsmk8slj17qg1oc1eiritk79_(1).jpg Category:Mammals Category:Herbivore